What Green Means for Communities
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SHELTERFORCE The journal of affordable housing and community building SUMMER 2008 What Green Means for Communities Majora Carter Greening the ghetto with Sustainable South Bronx PLUS Energizing green-collar Will Anaheim house job training & environmentally more than Disney friendly development and baseball? Organizing 2.0 Growing the urban Connecting Rust fresh food revolution Belt cities $7.50 · #154 Editor’s Note Moving at Warp Speed By Alice Chasan !"#’$ %#"& '()* about physics or math. My levers of change; then there are times when events seem claim to Einsteinian expertise pretty much begins to accelerate, as people come together to make it happen. and ends with + e Photo. It hangs on my study Lately, the pace of positive change has picked up at Iwall, framed alongside the letter inviting my father the National Housing Institute, in sync with movements to visit Albert Einstein at his home in Princeton. I never on the grass-roots and national levels. tire of looking at it, because it tells a In a few short months, NHI has launched a re designed great American story. Shelterforce, a state-of-the-art interactive Web site + ere’s my dad, who arrived at (www.nhi.org and www.shelterforce.org), and a new LETTERS Ellis Island in ,-./ at six months of group blog, www.Roo! ines.org. In a matter of weeks, age with his mother (to join his fa- Roo0 ines’ bloggers have created a conversation that To the Editor: ther, who had come earlier, 0 eeing takes NHI far beyond bricks and mortar to the ques- the Czar’s army). Now a thoroughly tions that will determine how we revitalize communi- I just fi nished reading American gentleman, he’s impecca- ties in the 3,st century. I urge you to visit Roo0 ines and “Stemming the Red Tide,” the bly dressed in the latest haberdash- add your own momentum through your comments. article on the subprime crisis ery circa ,-1.. His expression and When I inaugurated Roo0 ines in early May, I said that by Peter Dreier and John At- stance signal he’s bursting with pride it felt like the country is moving out of /. years in the las in the Spring 2008 issue to be in the living room of the great political wilderness. of Shelterforce. I’m not sure man’s house on Mercer Street. In so many ways, the energy is coalescing both in the I totally endorse their punch Next to him is Einstein—another electoral arena and at the grass-roots level to address line—the answer is to elect European immigrant who’d 0 ed op- the chronic economic, social, and environmental prob- the Democrats—but that’s a pression—looking the polar oppo- lems that have left the majority of Americans dispirited discussion for another time. site of my dapper dad and the very and yearning for a new set of national priorities. I really just wanted to write model of a modern genius: rumpled Charged by that same arc, NHI has rea4 rmed its and say that it’s the best pants, baggy sweater, iconically tan- commitment to the examination of the American hous- comprehensive piece I’ve read gled mane. ing crisis and advocacy for social and economic equity on the whole deal, the history, + ey’d met to talk about practical that has spurred us for more than 55 years. And we’ve the mechanics, etc. for the strategies for acting against ethnic expanded our purview to include the environmental, lay reader, and something I’ll and religious hatreds and genocide—a educational, and public-health issues that challenge the defi nitely have my students vision born out of the lessons of the vitality of communities. read when I teach my housing Holocaust. + eir common goals con- One of the leaders of the reinvigorated progressive course this fall. Kudos! nected a world-renowned scientist movement is Van Jones, founder of Green for All. He’s Rob Rosenthal and a New Jersey lawyer who was a quoted in Ted Wysocki’s article (on page ,1 of this is- Professor of Sociology grass-roots activist for political re- sue’s cover package), saying “We are on the cusp of in- Wesleyan University form and racial equality. credible change.” Green for All’s program for joining the Middletown, Conn. So, what I know about relativ- drive for social and economic equity with the goal of en- ity owes nothing to scienti2 c knowl- vironmentally sustainable practices in community de- edge and everything to the lessons velopment and green-collar job training in low-income of human connection: Sometimes, communities is accelerating that transformation, as is the movement of things seems to slow to a molasses-like Majora Carter’s pathbreaking work through Sustainable pace, when people feel isolated and marginalized from the South Bronx (“+ e Green New Deal,” Shelterforce’s inter- view with Carter, starts on page 6). Carter and Jones—along with the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer, Barack Obama—exemplify the kind of Shelterforce, a publication of the National Housing high-impact leadership that can vault us forward toward Institute, is dedicated to providing resources and diverse, vibrant communities in a more just and equita- information to those working to create and preserve ble society. I have no doubt that Dad and Prof. Einstein affordable housing and thriving communities. would have been on board for this exciting ride. ! 2 Summer 2008 www.nhi.org Shelterforce Volume 30, Number 2 Editor / Associate Alice Chasan Publisher [email protected] CONTENTS #154 Summer 2008 Associate Editor Matthew Hersh [email protected] Contributing Editors John Atlas, Miriam Axel- Lute, Jan Breidenbach, Peter Dreier, Chester Hartman, David Holtzman, W. Dennis Keating, Patrick Morrissy, Bobbi Murray, Winton COVER STORY: WHAT GREEN MEANS FOR COMMUNITIES Pitcoff Design / Web Gridwork Design 8 The Green New Deal National Housing Institute Majora Carter, by way of Sustainable Interim Executive Robert O. Zdenek South Bronx, is helping to change the Director urban landscape. Communications & Lois K. Cantwell Marketing Dir. [email protected] INTERVIEW BY MATTHEW HERSH Senior Fellow Alan Mallach Offi ce Administrator Nádine Heron-Fortune Taking the LEED In Your Board President John Atlas 14 Community Board VP Diane Sterner Board Secretary Patrick Morrissy Through local and regional initiatives on job training and Board of Directors development, communities are tailoring the eco-revolution for their Roland V. Anglin, ED, IRCT backyards. BY TED WYSOCKI John Atlas Peter Dreier, Occidental College Martin Johnson, ED, Isles, Inc. Making Food Deserts Bloom Patrick Morrissy, ED, HANDS, Inc. 18 Creative solutions to a lack of fresh Steven Most, President, The TurnAround Team Carole Norris, SVP, ICF International produce and wholesome food are blossoming in Michael Leo Owens, Emory University low-income neighborhoods. BY KARI LYDERSEN Phyllis Salowe-Kaye, ED, NJ Citizen Action Peter Shapiro, SWAP Financial Gregory D. Squires, George Washington Univ. A Tale of Two Anaheims Diane Sterner, ED, Housing & Community 22 Development Network, NJ After years of getting what they want, Deborah Visser, NeighborWorks America corporate titans in Anaheim are beginning to Woody Widrow, ED, TX Asset Building Coalition feel the clout of grass-roots groups seeking Shelterforce (ISSN 0885-9612) is published four times affordable housing. BY BOBBI MURRAY a year by the National Housing Institute. Editorial and Advertising: 111 Dunnell Road, Maplewood, NJ 07040. Home Again Subscription: P.O. Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834. 26 E-mail: [email protected], voice: (973) 763-0333, fax: (973) A Boston neighborhood accepts its transformation as 763-6331. Postmaster send change of address to: P.O. a beloved church, a long-treasured community asset, Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834. Periodicals postage paid in Orange, NJ 07050. is reborn as housing. BY DAVID HOLTZMAN Subscription rates are: single copy $7.50; yearly libraries and other organizations $30; $18 for in- Salvaging Success From Failure dividuals. Foreign add $15. Copyright ©2008. All 30 rights reserved. No portion of this magazine may be Lessons learned from missteps made in Chicago’s reprinted without the permission of the publisher. El Mercado project. BY BOB BREHM Shelterforce is listed in the Alternative Press Index 2 Editor’s Note and microfi lmed in UMI’s Alternative Press Collec- Decoding Housing Finance Agencies 4 Shelter Shorts tion. Visit Shelterforce Online at: www.nhi.org. 34 What housing advocacy organizations This publication is supported, in part, by grants from 6 Access need to know to gain leverage with Ford, F. B. Heron, Charles Stewart Mott, Rockefeller and 7 Industry News Surdna foundations, and the Bank of America, JPMor- powerful state housing fi nance gan Chase and Citigroup foundations, NeighborWorks agencies. BY CORIANNE P. SCALLY 40 Organize! America, PNC Bank and Public Service Electric & Gas. 42 Book Review ON THE COVER Photo from iStockphoto. 38 Subprime’s Footprint Stemming foreclosures demands immediate action, but a comprehensive solution requires a broader brush. BY JONATHAN SPADER www.nhi.org Shelterforce 3 SHELTER SHORTS HUD Sec’y Resigns, Questions Linger School’s Out (of Money) The number of home foreclosures nationwide is up 60 percent from one year ago, and it’s not just affecting the homeowner, but children of homeowners as well. Accord- ing to a report on “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams,” public schools are taking hits as districts funded by local property taxes experience higher levels of foreclosures. “It’s going to hurt the bottom line of state budgets in terms of the monies they give to schools,” Douglas H. Palmer, mayor of Trenton, N.J., and president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, told NBC News. Local property taxes account for about 30 percent of school funding, according to a recent study commis- Although Housing and Urban not effectively address the sioned by the U.S.